By Dan Ilett, 20 February 2006 13:25
NEWS
Her Majesty's Court Service is failing to show all the CCTV evidence presented, as some courts lack the technology to play footage, a report has revealed.
Six out of 167 unsuccessful cases were dropped or dismissed in the UK because courts, Crown Prosecution Service offices and defence solicitors use only VHS video equipment. Most CCTV footage, however, is now on DVD, research from the National Audit Office said.
The report said: "In order for a case to progress the police have to obtain the evidence, arrange for it to be reformatted and provide copies for the Crown Prosecution Service and the defence.
"This evidence needs to be available with the full file as it is often conclusive, leading either to early guilty pleas or to early dismissals, thus avoiding the additional costs of a trial."
However, a spokesman for HM Court Service told silicon.com that organisations give CCTV footage to police in a range of formats.
He said: "CCTV footage doesn't just come as DVD - it can be multiplex. We're working closely with others to ensure we can show CCTV in court. It's not quite as simple as playing it on a DVD or a VCR."
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1. Doktor Jon
The background to this story is actually far more complicated than we're led to believe.
Whilst there are still a vast number of analogue VHS and S-VHS Time Lapse (VCR) video recorders being used in modern CCTV systems, these are rapidly being replaced by Digital Video Recorders (DVR).
These machines, almost without exception, record many days of material to Hard Disc Drives, and in the event of an incident, the relevant part has to be located and copied to a suitable format.
Usually this is CD or DVD, but for the benefit of the courts, this could just as easily be VHS, if that's what they want.
Unfortunately, it is almost unheard of for a DVR's precious recordings to be routinely backed up in any shape or form, so whereas the older tape formats allowed archiving of perhaps 30 days recorded material, with a DVR it's more likely that the previous recordings will be overwritten within a matter of days.
In the event of any future serious incidents requiring Forensic Surveillance investigation of earlier recordings, the chances are that in many situations, they may well have already been erased.